


Night Owls

by Shepherd23



Series: A Series of Happy Beginnings [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, Late Night Movie, Rumbelle is Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 07:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12501520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shepherd23/pseuds/Shepherd23
Summary: A series of emergencies haul Rumplestiltskin from his bed in the middle of the night. Nobody ever said true love was easy.





	Night Owls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ml101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ml101/gifts).



“ _Aaba! Aaaba!_ ” it began. Rumplestiltskin was awake in an instant.

Then a sob, followed by silence. His heart began to race, but the crying started again only a moment later. As he disentangled himself from his wife’s embrace, she let out a tired groan.

“What time izzit?” Belle mumbled sleepily, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“Half past two,” Rumplestiltskin told her while he shut off the monitor on the bedside table. The noise was still audible without it, but barely. “I’ll get him.”

There was no response. He leant over to kiss his wife’s hair and found that she had drifted back to sleep the moment he said he would take care of it. He suppressed a chuckle. He’d always found night-time parenting much easier than she did.

In total darkness, Rumplestiltskin made his way to their bedroom door, guided by instinct alone. He’d made too many of these nightly excursions to count. He found and fumbled with the doorknob until it clicked, then opened the door as quietly as he could, stepped into the hallway and shut it in the same fashion. Sometime in the last six years, those movements had become a ritual that he thought he could carry out in his sleep. Some days, he was pretty sure he _did_ carry out this ritual in his sleep.

“Aah!”

He cursed under his breath as he picked up the Lego train, the pad of his foot throbbing painfully, and put it out of harm’s way on a shelf in the linen closet.

“Thank you, Gabrielle.”

“ _Aaaba! Aaba!”_

The sound was more urgent; not mere noise, but a cry for help, the only way their youngest child could attract his parents’ attention. Rumplestiltskin shuffled along the hallway as quietly as he could, careful not to wake anyone else. His eyes gradually adjusted to the faint glow coming from Gideon and Gabrielle’s bedroom, allowing him to locate the nursery door. The elder two hated pitch black; Nicholas couldn’t sleep in anything other than absolute darkness.

But he wasn’t asleep, so Rumplestiltskin flicked the lights on. He still blinked even though it was quite dim.

“Aaba!” Nicholas cried, rattling his cot walls excitedly when he saw his father. “Aaba!”

“Hey, Nicky,” Rumplestiltskin whispered. “What’s the matter, son?”

“ _Aaaaba!_ ” his youngest son wailed unhappily. At eight months old, that word was his standard unhappy cry, meaning anything from “I’m tired” to “Gabi stole my spoon again and I’m upset about it”. It had come as a bit of a disappointment to Rumplestiltskin, who’d thought, at first, he was trying to say “Papa”. Particularly since Gideon’s first word had been “Mama” and Gabi’s, strangely, had been “Pass the salt”. Followed shortly by “Mama”.

“Oh, my big boy.” He reached into the cot and picked Nicholas from it, lifting the boy onto his shoulder. His son’s downy hair tickled Rumplestiltskin’s cheek like a soft red cloud, thick and silky. Nicholas usually loved being perched up high, and Rumplestiltskin had soothed him back to sleep like this many times before. But this time he determinedly pushed himself away from his father and squirmed sideways until he rested horizontally in Rumplestiltskin’s arms. He turned and nuzzled inwards, giving Rumplestiltskin final confirmation as to his needs. Nicholas grumbled when he realised that his father couldn’t provide it.

“Sorry, son, that’s the one thing I can’t do for you.”

The apology wasn’t enough, and Nicholas began to wail.

“Oh, alright.”

Rumplestiltskin gently shifted his son onto his right arm, then used his left little finger to graze Nicholas’ cheek. There was a moment of adjustment where Nicholas tried to both wail and suckle at the same time, but eventually he sucked the finger into his mouth. A tiny tongue wrapped around Rumplestiltskin’s finger and applied pressure, making his father chuckle. He was, for now, appeased, suckling contentedly, but Rumplestiltskin knew he wouldn’t stay as such for long. And he didn’t want Nicholas’ cries to wake Gabi and Gideon.

There was no way for Rumplestiltskin to open the bedroom door quietly while cradling a eight-month-old in his arms, and he had only a minute at most before Nicholas spat out his finger to demand the real thing. Belle had to be woken regardless.

“He’s hungry, sweetheart,” said Rumplestiltskin, not bothering to keep his voice down when he got back to the master bedroom. His wife complained but sat up in bed.

“Why isn’t he a good one like Gabi was?” Belle grumbled.

Rumplestiltskin just smiled to himself. He knew his wife wasn’t truly annoyed with their son, nor would she ever abandon their children when they needed her; unlike him, she was just not a morning person.

“Here, I’ll do that for you,” he offered as she clumsily tried to pile their pillows behind her so that she could lean comfortably against the headboard. “Nicky’s getting impatient with me.”

Nicholas, having finally realised that Rumplestiltskin’s finger could not provide him with the sustenance he wanted, had begun to wriggle impatiently in his father’s arms. He tried to shove the finger out of his mouth and screwed up his face, but didn’t cry. He knew his mother was near. He could smell milk. Belle gave up with the pillows and slid one strap of her nightgown from her shoulder before taking the baby, just in time.

A few seconds passed, filled with gentle “feed me” mews, until Nicholas finally found what he was after and settled in his mother’s arms. His hungry gulping was surprisingly loud in the quiet of the night.

Rumplestiltskin chuckled lightly, sparing one moment to watch his wife and son. He then adjusted the pillows behind Belle’s back.

“Is this alright?”

“A little higher,” she requested.

He did so; Belle then leant back once more and wriggled into a comfortable position.

“Perfect. Thanks, Rumple.”

“Anytime, sweetheart,” he said, lightly kissing her forehead.

Rumplestiltskin yawned and settled against his wife, resting his head on the pillow behind her so he could watch his son. Not for the first time, he felt a small flare of jealousy at being tossed aside. He was simply not good enough for his boy anymore; the one thing that Belle could do for their baby that Rumplestiltskin couldn’t. When Gideon was born, Rumplestiltskin offered to bottle-feed him at night so Belle could sleep, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d hated using the breast pump. And, as she’d put it quite sternly, feeding their baby was _her_ job.

They’d done it differently with Gabrielle. Whereas Gideon had weaned himself at ten months – coincidentally around the time his little sister’s existence made itself known – Gabi continued to demand milk until she was almost two. They’d swapped her to formula simply to give her mother a rest, and Rumplestiltskin would never forget the experience of feeding his little girl.

“You should get some sleep,” Belle murmured tiredly, interrupting Rumplestiltskin’s thoughts. “We could be here a while. He’s a greedy little so-and-so. Isn’t that right, Nicky?”

Nicholas made no reply; well, no reply other than _slurp, gurgle, gurgle._

“I’m fine,” Rumplestiltskin replied with an unconvincing yawn. Belle raised an eyebrow at him.

He smiled at her and reached over to stroke their son’s hair, which was bright red with silvery sparkles from the moonlight. The red hair had come as something of a shock to Rumplestiltskin and Belle. They’d thought it would darken eventually, as Gideon’s did, but seven months later it was still the same shade it was when he was born. With his red hair and blue eyes, he looked so strikingly different from his brother and sister that Ruby used to joke that Belle must have “jumped the fence”, to use the crude phrase. The joke continued innocently enough for three months, until one of the ladies from Miss Ginger’s knitting circle pulled Belle aside at Granny’s and asked if Nicholas actually _did_ have a different father.

If it had happened seven years ago, Rumplestiltskin’s worries might have gotten the better of him enough to believe it. Now was a different story, and he could laugh at the utter ridiculousness of it.

“What are you thinking about?” Belle asked. Rumplestiltskin realised he was smiling.

“Just remembering Ruby’s little joke.”

She chuckled, not shyly but happily in the knowledge that he knew it was all a joke. The movement disturbed a lock of chestnut hair, which tumbled over her shoulder and onto the curve of her breast. Rumplestiltskin gently reached across to tuck the hair safely behind her shoulder again before Nicholas’ flailing fists found it. If he did, there would be trouble.

Belle knew full well what he was doing, but chose to tease him anyway.

“Any excuse for a grope.”

“I don’t need an excuse,” he told her, playfully nuzzling her neck. Feeling adventurous, he slid a hand under the duvet and onto his wife’s knee. She said nothing, so he continued higher up her thigh.

“Go to sleep, Rumple.”

“I am asleep.”

She nudged him with an elbow and rolled her eyes, but it was accompanied by a tired half-smile. Nicholas grumbled in annoyance at being disturbed, which made Rumplestiltskin and Belle both chuckle. It was rare that they ever got a moment to themselves anymore; inevitably, one or more of their children found a way to interfere. Gideon wouldn’t let them walk together. No, he had to be in the middle, holding both of his parents’ hands. Or if they were reading on the sofa, he had to be between them. Gabi was the wanderer. They couldn’t take their eyes off her for two seconds, in case she got distracted and ran off after a butterfly, or just had to ask Leroy a _vitally important,_ usually abrupt and highly inappropriate, question _right now._

Rumplestiltskin suspected Nicholas would quickly find his own way to come between his parents. He certainly loved being the centre of attention, even if he was half-asleep in his mother’s arms.

There was a knock at the door. “Mama? Papa?” the little voice of their six-year-old called, his fluffy bed-head visible in the dim light.

“Hey, Gid,” said Rumplestiltskin. “What’s the matter?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Gideon explained shyly. He clutched Ducky, his beloved stuffed toy crocodile, tightly to his chest, his eyes were wet and rubbed red, and he chewed nervously on the end of his thumb. Rumplestiltskin sighed. He knew what that meant.

“Bad dreams?” he asked. Gideon nodded. “Come here, son.”

He stretched out his arms as Gideon hopped onto the bed, then pulled his elder son into his arms and cradled him close. Gideon buried his face in his father’s pyjama shirt, one little fist balling the fabric with quite a firm grip and the other thumb in his mouth.

“The same one?” Another nod. “Aw, Gid.”

There was no putting him back to bed. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and Rumplestiltskin suspected it was one of the reasons why Gideon had been such a terrible sleeper for the first few years of his life. He knew Belle suspected the same thing, judging from the way her eyes teared up as she watched her firstborn cling to his papa. He knew she would have wrapped them both in a hug had she not been otherwise occupied tending to his brother.

“How about we put a movie on in the playroom for a bit?” Belle suggested. “Papa can make hot cocoa and stay up with you until the bad dreams go away.”

Gideon nodded against his father’s chest. “’Kay,” he agreed with a sniffle.

“Alright.” Rumplestiltskin hugged his son close and stood, hauling Gideon up with him. It hurt his back, but Rumplestiltskin still took the chance to carry his children. He had maybe a year left to do so with his elder son; then his boy would simply be too big. “See you downstairs in a bit?”

“Sure,” Belle replied. Then she nodded at Nicholas. “He’ll be a little while yet, though.”

“Night-night, Nicky,” said Gideon, completely misunderstanding.

Rumplestiltskin carried Gideon downstairs and set him down on the springy sofa in the playroom, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead before putting the movie on. The Golds were likely one of the last families in Storybrooke to own DVDs, since they didn’t watch nearly enough television to warrant a subscription to Netflix. Before they had the kids, Rumplestiltskin and Belle had maybe put on a movie once every so often, usually late at night when they were both tired but didn’t feel like going to bed. They watched it a lot more now with the children, although that still wasn’t saying much. Gideon prefered to read, Gabi couldn’t sit still for long enough, and Nicholas frequently lost interest in what was happening on the screen. However, it was useful for nights like tonight.

_Stardust_ was already in the Blu-ray player. It was the kids’ favourite non-animated film, and Gideon was old enough to manage the first few minutes without supervision. Rumplestiltskin set it running, then went into the kitchen to make cocoa. He made four cups from experience; if Gideon was awake, then Gabi would be too before long.

Sure enough, by the time Rumplestiltskin was done with the cocoa – and Victoria was done taking horrible advantage of Tristan at the shop – Gabi was downstairs, settled onto the sofa with her brother. Thankfully, there was no fighting over the blanket; Gabi had brought her own.

“Hi, Papa.”

“Hey, sweetie,” he said, setting the cups down on the coffee table before giving her a kiss.

“Where’s Mama?”

“She’ll be down soon; Nicky was hungry.”

“Okay.”

And that was the end of it. Gabi lay down so that her head was on Gideon’s knees, the two of them stretched across the length of the sofa leaving no room for their parents. Rumplestiltskin just smiled and sat on the floor beside Gideon. His son liked to hold his hand during some of the scarier scenes, and the remote was nearby to fast-forward the particularly scary ones.

While the movie played, Rumplestiltskin found his attention wandering from the television to his tired children. He felt a pang of nostalgia when he remembered that, in less than three months, Gabi would be five years old. Two months after that, Nicholas would have his first birthday, and four months after _that_ , Gideon would be a big boy of seven. This time next year, Gabi would be off to preschool, and Gideon moved up to the second grade. Time was flying by; his children were growing up so quickly.

A drawing tacked to the wall then caught Rumplestiltskin’s attention. It was one of his spinning wheel that Gabi had drawn in kindergarten, with various ‘notes for improvement’ scattered around the edges. He loved that picture. The others surrounding it were mostly of aeroplanes, machines and the odd castle, most of which had been turned into the Lego creations located in various nooks around the playroom (safely out of Nicholas’ reach, of course). Gabi’s proudest creation was tacked in the centre – it was the flying pirate ship that appeared later in _Stardust._ Gabi said she was going to build a flying ship just like it one day, and not a Lego ship – a proper flying ship. With all her intelligence, creativity and stubbornness _clearly_ inherited from her mother, Rumplestiltskin believed her.

As always with a playroom, toys were everywhere. To their credit, Gideon and Gabi were quite tidy children – it was Nicholas who was responsible for most of the mess. In the middle of the room, considered neutral territory, was the children’s Christmas gift from Snow. Though it was July, Belle still hadn’t found the heart to tell the fair schoolteacher what Gabi and Gideon had done with the dolls. But the battle enactment between the princess driving the black racecar (modified to replace her ballgown with more battle-worthy armour, and warpaint adorning her cheeks) and the crash dummy calling his dinosaur troops to formation inside the flimsy castle dollhouse (repainted gold and red from its original white and pink) spoke for itself.

There was an unfinished jigsaw on the coffee table beneath a half-built Lego helicopter, and the game of Scrabble abandoned last Thursday when Henry had been unable to accept defeat at the hands of his six-year-old uncle. The largest occupant of the playroom was, of course, the bookshelf, which was set long and wide so that the kids could reach even the top shelves. It was divided neatly into thirds as agreed upon by Gideon and Gabi, with a corner on the bottom shelf set aside for Nicholas’ picture books. The top left was Gabi’s section, filled with books about aeroplanes, steam engines, Victorian England, kitchen science experiments and a DIY fix-it/repairs book that Rumplestiltskin had put his foot down and said she wasn’t allowed to use until she was eight. Gideon claimed the top right for his books on dinosaurs, living reptiles, amphibians, an encyclopaedia of North American wildlife, an atlas and two dictionaries (one Macquarie and one Oxford). The bottom shelf was their shared section – a set of _Horrible Histories_ and _Sciences,_ the complete _Harry Potter_ and _Percy Jackson_ sagas, numerous Roald Dahl books, the second and third volumes of _A Series of Unfortunate Events,_ an Australian series called _The Key to Rondo_ (which Gideon adored and had read six times over despite the lack of snakes) and an ever-growing pile of _Dragonology_ books.

Gideon gripped his father’s hand tightly, and Rumplestiltskin’s attention drifted back to the children and the film. They had reached the tavern scene. He subtly pressed fast-forward just as Belle padded downstairs.

Gabi poked her head out from beneath her blankie. “Mama!” she exclaimed excitedly, bounding up to hug her mother and baby brother. It was quick, though – Gabi wasn’t about to miss the scenes with the flying ship.

“How is he?” Belle whispered as she settled into the reclining chair, nodding to Gideon.

“Better, I think,” said Rumplestiltskin. Gideon had let go of his hand, so he took the opportunity to ruffle his son’s hair fondly. “Nothing like cocoa and a movie.”

Belle chuckled. In her arms, Nicholas yawned and rubbed his eyes tiredly, but he wasn’t content to remain still. She put him on the floor, where he immediately crawled to the table, found a rubber starfish and began to chew it happily. Nicholas had, fortunately, very little interest in his older siblings’ toys; he preferred cheap, generic bath floats over most anything else. Since he was usually gumming them, Rumplestiltskin suspected the reason was that they tasted good.

“Did you have to go to work early tomorrow?” he whispered to his wife. She’d only gotten a moment of relief; Gabi had crawled into Nicholas’ abandoned spot the first chance she got.

“I hope not,” she answered just as softly, leaning back in the recliner and brushing their daughter’s hair out of her face.

Rumplestiltskin grunted in agreement. Gideon squeezed his hand again as they had gotten to the part with the “angry pirate captain” – Shakespeare pretending to throw Tristan overboard – and Rumplestiltskin gave him a gentle squeeze back. He wouldn’t fast-forward this part, but made sure his son knew he was nearby all the same.

“A-pish!” Nicholas announced proudly, dumping a rubber ducky into his father’s lap.

“What’s that?” Rumplestiltskin whispered with mock amazement, holding up the ducky.

“A-pish!” Nicholas repeated. He crawled closer to the sofa and grabbed hold of the cushion so he could pull himself up.

“Down in front,” Gideon complained, trying to shove his little brother away. Nicholas wouldn’t cooperate. “Nicky, get down. I can’t see.”

“Da-woo!”

Rumplestiltskin grabbed his younger son and pulled him into his lap before tensions between the brothers really broke. “There we go,” he said, setting Nicholas on his back and distracting him with the ducky. “How’s that?”

“Duh-dee,” said Nicholas. Rumplestiltskin didn’t have a clue what it meant, but Nicholas repeated it a few times more before he settled down to gum the ducky.

Rumplestiltskin truly wished he had a camera so that he could capture this moment – his family together, at peace. His elder son stretched out on the sofa, slowly drifting off again distracted from his nightmares by a tale with a happy ending despite its scary parts. His wife reclining in the chair with their daughter in her lap, both of them lulled into a fantasy world with witches and fallen stars and heroes and flying ships. His younger son gumming a rubber ducky, worried about nothing more drastic than which toy he would chew next.

That moment, right there and then – it was a paradise he wished he could stay in forever.

 

_ Three hours later _

_Crash!_

Rumplestiltskin jerked awake. First, he registered the noise and attempted to get up, whereupon he felt a cramping pain in his shoulder. Gradually, the fog of sleep wore away and he realised he had fallen asleep on the floor of the playroom. In addition, somebody was patting his cheek with a wet rubber duck.

“Duh-dee,” said Nicholas, resuming his chewing once he realised his father was awake.

“Morning, son,” Rumplestiltskin said huskily, pushing himself up by his good arm. He looked over at the clock, which informed him that it was now six o’clock. Meaning he’d had a total of five and a half hours’ sleep in three blocks. Well, he’d had much worse.

Rubbing his eyes and blinking in the early morning sunlight, Rumplestiltskin picked Nicholas off the floor and painfully got to his feet. He would definitely need a long, warm bath to deal with the cramps in his shoulder and hip from sleeping on the floor. Belle was still asleep in the armchair.

“Huh?” she muttered sleepily. Rumplestiltskin tickled her nose again, and she woke. “What – oh. Did we fall asleep?”

“Looks like it.”

“Dawoo!” Nicholas added happily.

Belle groaned and sat up straight, rubbing her eyes and yawning widely. “Where’re the kids?”

A second crash resounded from the kitchen.

“Sounds like Gabi dropped the cereal box again,” he said with a sigh, running a hand through his hair.

Belle chuckled and reached for Nicholas, who burbled happily and all but jumped into his mother’s arms. “I’ll take him. You’d better round up those two before they try to get the milk out.”

“Oh, gods,” said Rumplestiltskin, thinking of the last time the children had attempted to make their own breakfast. He was still finding patches of flour in the strangest of locations.

Nobody ever said true love was easy, but by gods – even as Rumplestiltskin swept cornflakes from underneath the refrigerator and sneezed while cleaning up spilt pepper, then scoffed down a hastily-made piece of toast and fought his older children to clean their teeth while Belle stopped their youngest from flinging soggy cereal around the dining room – he wouldn’t trade it for the world.


End file.
